Cases of Spirit Healing and the power of prayer. Another spirit doctor - Dr. Fisher - with the mediumship of Mrs Conant.

George Mueller (1805 – 1898) the Victorian
preacher and founder of orphanages in and around
Bristol, U.K., was not a healer, but his reliance on
prayer to provide all his needs just shows how
effective sincere and persistent thoughts on the power
of spirit can be. He was himself healed of near fatal
illness in his early twenties, after which he became a
pastor and gave himself over to the will of God. He
never asked for money or donations, nor led
fund-raising campaigns. Yet his foundation, which
continues to operate to this day, has provided care
and education for the poor, and the needy, young and
old, with help from beyond. Charles Dickens himself
visited one of his orphanages and was greatly
impressed.

George put all the needs for his operations into
the hands of divine providence, and in trusting in
this, help eventually came in the form of staff,
housing, or financial support. During the last
seventeen years of his life, Mueller traveled the
world as a preacher and missionary, visiting 42
countries, and covering hundreds of thousands of
miles, quite a feat in those days. All his expenses
were covered by his trust in divine guidance. He
never asked for a penny or cent, but somehow, help was
always at hand to provide food, lodging and a passage
to the next destination. In that respect Peace Pilgrim
was later to follow in his footsteps.

Help from spirit has always been at hand for
healers if they have complete trust in their guides
and spirit doctors. Just as Tom Pilgrim, described in
the first of this series, had Dr. Robert Koch to
support his healing work, so in the same way exactly
100 years earlier in the 1850s in Boston, U.S.A., Mrs.
J. H. Conant (1831-1875) the healer and medium had her
support from a doctor in spirit. Like Tom Pilgrim,
she had first visited another medium for healing. At
the age of twenty-one she had consulted several
doctors about a severe consumption of the blood,
apparently some form of tuberculosis, which they were
unable to cure. However, the teenage medium Anna
Richardson brought through her own spirit doctor, Dr.
John Dix Fisher, a former Boston physician. He
carefully considered Mrs. Conant’s condition and said:

“Your case has been pronounced hopeless, but I do
not consider it so. If you will obey my instructions,
and do what I require in payment, in three weeks I
will have you well; but I shall charge you what
perhaps you will call a heavy fee. You have some of
the finest mediumistic powers that I have ever seen,
and the world ought to have the full benefit of them.
You are yet to be a remarkable medium if you will give
your consent.”

Then, just as a hundred years later, Dr. Koch had
cured Tom Pilgrim’s stomach ulcer while giving him a
complete life reading, Dr. Fisher proceeded to render
a correct synopsis of Mrs. Conant’s past life and
experiences, fully explaining those sights, sounds and
occurrences which had been so strange to her from
childhood. These, he informed her, were perceived and
recognized in consequence of her mediumistic capacity
of discernment, in other words, her second sight. [We
have more recent accounts of second sight in Mia
Dolan’s books listed in a recent post].

Dr, Fisher continued: “You are a spirit medium,
and the fee I require in consideration of your case
(of healing the consumption) is that you will give
your powers to the world hereafter, by becoming a
public medium. I want you for a medium myself, and
this is the fee I exact for your cure.”

After some hesitation, in which wonder and anxiety
were nearly balanced in her mind, she finally
accepted. The spirit physician then began working for
her benefit, and in three weeks from that date – as he
predicted in commencing the case – his medicines had
wrought such a perceptible improvement in her that all
her friends united in declaring they should not
recognize her as the same person they had known
previous to the commencement of his treatment.

The doctor then prepared for business with his
new medium, and as an introductory step, by writing
through her hand while entranced, demanded that she
should change her place of abode, not giving any
particular reason for it at the time – though the
benefit was afterward apparent – but seeming to wish
to test her confidence in him. She indicated her
willingness to comply, but when he directed her to go
to a certain place on Hanover Street, Boston, which
she knew to be a large and very popular
boarding-house, where rooms were rarely, if ever,
vacant, she did not entertain much faith that her
errand would be successful. She however called at the
house, saw the landlady, and was told, as she
anticipated, that there was not a vacant apartment
therein. The landlady desired to know who recommended
her to come, and upon Mrs. Conant’s telling her
(after some misgivings concerning the landlady’s
belief in her sanity,) that John Dix Fisher, a ‘dead
doctor’ had sent her there, she exclaimed: “Oh, Dr.
Fisher told you to come, did he? Then there must be
something in it. He always has a reason for what he
does; he would not have sent you here if he had not
seen that I was soon to have a vacancy. Call again
tomorrow, and we will see what can be done.”

It appeared that the landlady, Mrs. Cates, was
herself a medium, and many of her patrons were firm
believers in the new doctrine of spirit return – that
George A. Redman, the celebrated medium, was at that
time in the house, giving public séances for physical
manifestations every evening, and that Dr. Fisher had
thus introduced his medium – unwittingly to herself –
into a congenial home. That very evening, Mr. Redman
called upon the landlady and gave notice that as he
was in a short time to remove his office further up
town, his room would be vacant. Upon Mrs. Conant’s
calling next day she was so informed, and securing it,
was at once the possessor of a location, already
magnetized by the presence of a powerful medium and
the oft-repeated séances which had been held there;
an advantage which, however hidden to the skeptic,
will be immediately apparent to those at all
conversant with the delicacy of the conditions
necessary for successful and easy control.

Dr. Fisher now desired her to commence her
mediumistic duties, as per agreement. She resisted
for awhile, but yielded at last and began serving him
as a public instrument for medical examinations and
prescriptions, having wonderful success in all the
cases undertaken, and being from the first, literally
overburdened with employment. At this house the most
singular manifestations occurred in her presence, both
of a mental and physical character. At first it was
found that the magnetic aid of the sister of the
landlady – Martha Smith – was necessary – she serving
as a battery to supply the vital force required for
spirit manifestations – but in time Mrs. Conant became
developed to such an extent in mediumistic power as to
no longer require her presence. A gentleman boarding
at the house was also found to be similarly gifted,
and with such a degree of strength that it was
inadvisable for himself and Mrs. Conant to sit at the
dinner table at the same time. Whenever such a
circumstance occurred the table was violently lifted,
or rocked from side to side in a manner suggestive of
dining on shipboard in a heavy gale. Therefore when
Mr. Conant and his lady drew near the table it was
their custom to see if the gentleman medium was
already there, in which case they remained in waiting
till he had retired – the same course being adopted by
the other party.

The first person who came to test her capacity as
a physician, was a medical gentleman from Bridgewater,
Mass., who was desirous of settling in his mind,
beyond doubt, the verity or falsity of spirit return.
He had heard that Dr. Fisher controlled her, and as he
had been acquainted with him while in earth life
(having been a college classmate of Dr. Fisher’s) he
determined to convince himself as to the correctness
of the report. At the close of the sitting – during
all of which Mrs. Conant was unconsciously entranced –
he told her that he had propounded to the influence
speaking, a regular series of questions similar to
those put by a medical board to an applicant who
desired fellowship as a physician, and that every one
had received a correct answer. This fact, together
with the giving of various items of information, of
which the medium could have had no knowledge, greatly
astonished him.
“Are you satisfied?” asked Mrs. Conant.
“I am sure that I have been talking with John Dix
Fisher, and nobody else,” he replied.

The astonishing power of penetration possessed by
the spirit physician regarding the troubles of those
yet in the physical form was soon evinced in an
unexpected manner, and concerning a much dreaded
matter. A young lady residing in the same house with
Mrs. Conant began to be ill, exhibiting mysterious
symptoms, and Mrs. Cates the landlady desired the
medium to give her a medical examination. Dr. Fisher,
having carefully diagnosed the case through her,
declared the patient to be suffering from small-pox in
its incipient stage. The inmates of the house became
alarmed, and demanded that a regular physician should
be summoned. Dr. Ayer, who lived not far off, was
called in, and gave it as his opinion that the girl
had only a bad cold – “he couldn’t help what the .dead
doctor said, it was nonsense to call it small pox.”
Dr. Fisher then controlled Mrs. Conant, and sent a
message to his medical critic to the following effect:
“Tell Dr. Ayer, that in two hours Nature will settle
the case.” In two hours, as he had predicted, the
patient exhibited unmistakable signs of the disease,
and Dr. Ayer was obliged to concur with the unseen
practitioner – which he did in a half scornful way,
saying with a laugh: “Of course the ‘dead doctor’
could see inside a person better than I could.”

Several other instances of the disease came up
for consideration in the house, and as she was
constantly surrounded by investigators and seekers
after medical advice, from 9 o’clock a.m. to sometimes
late at night, it became necessary that the small pox
patients be removed for the safety of her visitors.
When the time arrived for their departure, Dr. Fisher
gave orders concerning their transportation, and the
measures to be observed for cleansing the house,
(which arrangements were implicitly carried out.) He
then directed Mrs. Conant to lock her door, and to
refuse to allow the lady who was having a sitting at
the time he came, to leave until he reported that all
was right; alleging that if his requirements were
followed no trouble would ensue, and that the disease
should be stayed, as far as this particular dwelling
was concerned. Mrs. Conant obeyed with regard to the
door, but the lady, after satisfying her curiosity,
was very desirous of retiring from the room, and as no
word of release came from the spirit physician, the
anxiety of the medium increased to perturbation, which
was finally dispelled by his writing through her hand
that all was sell, that the patients had been removed,
that he had so prepared the house that the lady could
safely go out, and that no one would hereafter be in
danger of taking the disease by coming therein.
Subsequent events did not disprove the truth of his
assertion, although the disease was very prevalent in
the neighborhood.

The ‘dead doctor’ was speedily summoned, on
account of this success, to treat several patients for
this malignant malady. At such times as he made
visits to them, he would thoroughly entrance his
medium, call at the house in question, make his
prescription, and take her home again – she all the
while unconscious of what she would have considered
her dangerous errand. At one time he thus attended
five cases, all of which terminated favorably. In one
instance, however, by reason of some unexplained
circumstance, he lost control of Mrs. Conant while at
the bedside of one of these small pox patients; she,
gaining a knowledge of her position, and seized with a
deadly fear of contagion, ran home with the utmost
speed. Mrs. Cates met her in the hall of the house,
exclaiming, “What is the matter?” but Mrs. Conant was
only able to gasp something about “small pox” as she
hurriedly sought her apartment. The landlady, who was
herself a medium, followed her to her room, and, after
some time, succeeded in magnetizing her so that she
became quiet. Dr. Fisher then resumed control of his
medium and informed the landlady that there was not
the slightest danger of Mrs. Conant’s taking the
disease herself, or imparting it to others – that she
was perfectly shielded from it by the power of her
invisible guardians.

[to be continued]

[This account of Mrs. Conant’s healing work with
Dr. Fisher is excerpted from the “Biography of Mrs. J.
H. Conant” by Allen Putnam, William White and Company,
Boston, 1873. Information about George Mueller was
obtained from the George Mueller Foundation’s website: http://www.mullers.org ] Richard R.